Musings of an oft-bemused former laboratory postdoc

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Ever for Never

Just come back from the middle class’s likely favourite supermarket, having got up at six in order to get there for a 7 am opening so as to avoid as much as possible the elbowed and elbowing throng storing up their appliance pouches in readiness for a week of sitting around getting drunk and fat (sez me), wherein, after I’d bit the bullet at spending more than I intended, I wandered over, in conversation with my companion about the insidious and downright dangerous influence of the alternative medicine brigade’s convincing of a loving mother that she knows better than to listen to the real medical advice of trained and qualified real clinicians (as opposed to those who merely peddle their dubious wares in a misappropriately labelled ‘clinic’) when it comes to the only viable treatment option for her seriously ill young son, to the magazine shelves and there espied the latest edition of this shamefully-stocked quack rag

, picked it up, shook it, raged, “Have you seen this?” and briefly contemplated buying it, but a soothing “Don’t, you’ll only make yourself angry” coupled with the still smarting blow to my wallet convinced me against contributing to the upholding of Lynne and Bryan’s patronising smugness; but I was still frothing in the car park, and still am back here at home where, Saturday being ‘vinyl day’, I’ve put on some also soothing Kate Bush, after, that is, cleaning my stylus, as necessitated by hawking something disgusting into my mouth (sorry – this weather sets off my sinuses) and inadvertently spitting it out when I went to blow the dust off, and am wondering at the distastefulness of commenting on an ongoing awful situation but noting that that doesn’t seem to stop the paid columnists offering up their insensitive take; and becoming more and more convinced that the waning of ‘mainstream’ religion is not unconnected with the apparent cancerous subscribing to complementary and alternative medicine, with its gurus, such as Lynne and Bryan, rendering redundant deaf and callous gods (just look at the cover: ‘Prayer and distance healing’ – arrogant swine!), and further wondering whether, if you patronise CAM ‘clinics’, or waste good money on useless ‘treatments’ and ‘medicines’, or buy magazines (or shop at supermarkets peddling them) that promote their appeal to the vulnerable and the gullible, or you even tolerate their deluded conversation… you are perhaps… to some degree… complicit.